


fire and revenge can both keep a bed warm

by chaoticsandstorm



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Azula (Avatar)-centric, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Podfic Available, Same as Canon - Freeform, kinda? more like crazy but with a purpose, slightly older azula, spoiler but zuko and azula team up to destroy caldera palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23443066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticsandstorm/pseuds/chaoticsandstorm
Summary: Mercy was not a word familiar to Azula.She knew when to let things go – for all that she excelled in making others suffer, she knew that it was pointless to make them suffer needlessly. Give them what attention they deserve, and no more. Torturing someone who wasn’t guilty? A waste of time and resources. It was not mercy, just practicality and ruthless efficiency.(Azula, in a world where things were just a little less crazy, her brother a little less absent, and her faith in Ozai a little less overwhelming)Now with apodfic availablefrom the lovely Oceantail!
Relationships: Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Azula & Mai (Avatar), Azula & Ozai (Avatar), Azula & Ty Lee (Avatar), Azula & Ursa (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 550





	fire and revenge can both keep a bed warm

**Author's Note:**

> hey, it's me again - back at it with an infuriating lack of dialogue and poorly-edited work. i've had this in my drafts for a while now so i'm posting it now then cleaning it up a bit later  
> OKAY, so TRIGGER WARNINGS:  
> \- Implied/referenced child abuse  
> and that's it, same as canon
> 
> this is a one-shot for now. may extend later but eh. i know i struggle a lot with Azula's characterisation but this is an AU so i feel like that's okay here lol
> 
> EDIT: 30/4/20, finally saw that twitter thread from Aaron Ehasz about him intending for Azula to have a redemption arc (but longer than Zuko's) and that at her very bottom she would find Zuko - and his faith & love would help her recover, and i feel VINDICATED

Mercy was not a word familiar to Azula.

She knew when to let things go – for all that she excelled in making others suffer, she knew that it was pointless to make them suffer needlessly. Give them what attention they deserve, and no more. Torturing someone who wasn’t guilty? A waste of time and resources. It was not _mercy_ , just practicality and ruthless efficiency.

Zuko was always tortured, because Zuko was always doing something wrong. The advisors, servants, and Ozai alike all sneered at him when he walked too near. Zuko was never favoured in the palace. He was too weak, favouring compassion over fists and flame. He was also infuriatingly straightforward. What you see is what you get with Zuko, and it was worse when he was too young to comprehend that some may seek to harm him.

Azula toyed with him because she was bored, and because she could. It was for her own amusement, when she was young, but she grew out of it after Zuko’s exile. From then on, her fleeting encounters with Zuko were designed to deliberately twist the dagger firmly lodged between his ribs. To stoke the coals of his anger until he was seething in rage and half-blind with it, choking on his own emotion. Then he failed to notice the gaps in Azula’s stories, the falsity of her heart-felt assurances that father wanted him back.

She had no time to waste. Not even for her brother.

Now, standing over his crippled and beaten body, watching his blood drip into the dust-coloured earth, she has a choice to make. Kill him herself or report him to another admiral. Or better yet, report him to their father and watch as he locks Zuko away forever, or sets fire to the other half of his face.

It should be a simple decision. _Ruthless efficiency,_ remember? Azula’s perfectionism has always ensured that she wastes no time on those who are undeserving of her attention. Her traitor, weakling older brother, glaring up at her with eyes glowing like embers and one hand clutching his wound. Beaten by a half-hearted attempt at an assassination from a sickly Earth Kingdom villager, then crushed beneath the force of Azula’s flames. She can smell the singed hair.

Still, Azula hesitates.

She remembers a time where she ran after Zuko with pudgy fingers, fire dancing along her hands as she demonstrated her latest kata, already so much more advanced than her brother. He smiled and complimented her on her skill, looking the part of a proud other brother, but Azula knew he was jealous. Everyone was. People in her classes tried sabotaging her until father switched her to private tuition. The memory is wrong – Zuko never looked at her with that much kindness. His eyes were always tinged with envy and greed. He wanted to be as good as her, better even. He couldn’t stand that she was the favoured child.

But- he was Ursa’s favourite.

He mother brushed her hair and smiled at her, complimenting her on her lovely robes, or the skills she was developing, but the smile was all wrong. Twisted, with that jagged edge Azula was learning to recognise and loathe, then use. Her mother, she noted, never commented on her firebending, nor Zuko’s weakness. It was her passive way of taking sides. Ursa claimed to love them both, but she whispered _monster_ under her breath when Azula chased after bat-pidgeons, and screamed when Azula wandered too close to the turtle-ducks.

Zuko. The weak sibling, the pathetic prince, the failed son and firebender. _He_ was Ursa’s favourite.

Azula straightens and makes her decision. Zuko will be delivered to their father in chains, with no possible method of redemption. Father cleared the way for her to become the next Fire Lord, and Zuko will soon become part of that clearing. With Zuko gone, she will be Crown Princess, then Fire Lord, and she will raze the Earth Kingdom to the ground with her father by her side. The golden child, the prodigy, the cunning manipulator, unleashed upon the world. She will prove to everyone once and for all that she is the superior sibling.

Zuko’s eyes darken, like he knows. Azula almost laughs. Poor, stupid Zuko. He could never tell when to trust someone. He must be chanting that stupid mantra to himself, even now. _Azula always lies._ Which she does, to be fair, but in this instance there is no escape for him.

_You’re going to our father,_ she taunts him, and his face whitens in horror.

A sentence worse than death, as the two know. Azula has never heard of _mercy_ a day in her life, but cruelty? She is intimately familiar with. 

Zuko returns to his homeland, but not to Caldera City. Not for long. The moment Ozai hears word of Zuko’s capture, he sends a falcon-hawk demanding that Zuko be imprisoned in some isolated prison miles off the shore of the Fire Nation. There will be no peace for Zuko. He will not get to see the land he adores, even after exile and being chased halfway around the world by tanks and knives. The prison is renowned for breaking the spirits of its prisoners, and has a special technique for handling Firebenders. Azula has heard rumours of Firebenders imprisoned there who lost their connection to Agni; their flame revoked.

_Good,_ Azula thinks, because Zuko deserves to suffer in some dark corner of their nation where he can never rival her for Ozai’s attention. Then she shivers, a small, quiet thing, at the thought of losing her bending like that. She brushes off the thought. She will never lose her bending, and if she was ever imprisoned in the Boiling Rock then she would burn the place to the ground.

Azula visits Zuko as frequently as she can manage, just to taunt him. _How does it feel to be discarded?_ she asks him, and watches as his lips curl into a snarl. He does not rise to her challenge. He remains sitting on the edge of his bed, curled in on himself like a wounded animal. The flame in his eyes has dimmed. Zuko has not given up – she knows better than to assume he would ever go down without a fight, unless it is with their father – but he is _different._ Smaller, somehow. Weaker. More fragile. The Boiling Rock is rapidly accomplishing its goal of breaking him. Isn’t that what Azula wanted? Her brother in chains, her father disgusted in him and proud of Azula? Zuko broken, Zuko hurt, Zuko weak?

The next time Azula visits, Zuko doesn’t even turn around.

Time passes, as it always does. Azula sets her sights on conquering the Earth Kingdom, and within a few months has Ba Sing Se and other territories firmly under her thumb. She sends her report to her father with numb and tingling fingers, body wracked with the remaining power of her lightning. _He must be proud of me,_ she thinks, and could collapse in relief. But she won’t. Because she is Azula and not Zuko, the strong child, the golden child. Of course her father is proud of her. She has conquered half the Earth Kingdom for him. A little lightning damage, a few burns lingering around her arms where a defector in her army tried fighting back, is all worth the praise and adoration she will receive when she is home.

Mai and Ty Lee are quiet these days. They stare at each other out of the corners of their eyes when they think Azula cannot see, and say nothing.

The days blur together in an endless line of destruction and fire and screaming. Azula used to enjoy it. Getting reactions from these people, making them bow before her and beg for their lives. _Crown Princess Azula, beautiful and wise._ She doesn’t know when it stopped. She still burns them alive and brings down cities across the Earth Kingdom, the comet looming in the distance, waiting for that day when she can finally burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground with her father. But it feels dull. Hollow victories and hollow praise. Mai and Ty Lee avoid her eyes when she commands them to praise her, murmuring insincere words about her glory, and how she is truly blessed by Agni. They sound like the Fire Sages and courtiers at home. They sound like her mother, empty eyes and twisted words. _I love you Azula. I do._

No matter. Mai and Ty Lee will get over themselves. Soon the Earth Kingdom will be nothing but scorched earth, and father will become _Phoenix King_ while Azula is crowned Fire Lord. Zuko is safely tucked away in a prison that brings him lower every day, and Azula hit the Avatar with a bolt of lightning. There is nothing standing in their way.

Azula returns home, the citizens cheering and hoisting banners to welcome her return. She smirks. Finally, the treatment she deserves. Her military successes recognised, and not a word breathed of her brother.

Her father graces her with a nod. He does not say he is proud of her, but he never had to say it. Azula knows. Why else would he entrust her with the Earth Kingdom? The crown of the Heir Apparent rests on her head. Not Zuko’s. _Hers._

Things are good at home. Mai spends her time acting sullen and withdrawn, but she has always been that way, and while Ty Lee disappears somewhere within the palace, well, she is not missed. Azula has other servants, other guards. People happy to serve her every whim.

Azula’s chest twists itself into knots. She has other servants, but she wants Mai and Ty Lee. She does not know what this feeling is. She burns Ty Lee during a sparring session and threatens to transfer Mai’s family to a colony near the front lines, but neither beg for mercy. Ty Lee stares upwards at her, tears welling in her eyes, and Mai’s knuckles turn white around her knife, but neither say a word. Azula has no hold over them.

She starts burning things in her wing of the palace, and tormenting her servants. She makes the councillors uncomfortable and devises ways to make them suffer. Amidst all this, she turns to Ozai, waiting for him to say something. Anything.

_We will raze the Earth Kingdom to the ground,_ is all he says. _Be patient._ And he expects that to be enough.

Then they receive word that the Avatar is still alive.

Azula is sent to the future rubble to find the Avatar, and kill him properly this time. She is not successful. Her tanks keep malfunctioning, her soldiers keep striking, and no one seems to be following her orders.

_WORK,_ she screams at them. _DO YOUR JOB PROPERLY. I AM YOUR FUTURE FIRE LORD._

They follow the Avatar across the Earth Kingdom until she realises where he is headed. _The Boiling Rock._ Azula’s first thought is not of Zuko; it is of relief. _Finally._ She has the Avatar in her hands. Then things go wrong. There is a breakout, and the water peasant chief escapes, along with the fan warrior girl and a handful of war prisoners. The Avatar and his little friends guide them and make for the war balloons. She does not realise Zuko is among them until there is a blast of fire heading for her face, and she punches through it to find Zuko standing before her. Pale, weak, trembling in every limb, and far thinner than he was the last time she visited. But determined.

They fight, and Azula is pressing in on him, backing him towards the ravine and the escaping war balloon. Jets of blue flame meet tentative curls of red, and it doesn’t take a genius to guess what the outcome of the fight will be.

Then there is a pressure at her neck, and Azula goes down.

Confusion. Rage. Azula does not realise what has happened until she sees Mai and Ty Lee standing over her, Ty Lee staring at her fists in shock and Mai watching the war balloon leave with slitted yet satisfied eyes.

_I’m sorry Azula,_ Ty Lee whispers into her ear. _This was the only way._

Mai makes no such apologies.

As soon as the paralysis wears off, Azula throws the two in jail and returns to the Fire Nation to relay the bad news. Ozai does not care. He will simply kill the Avatar on the day of the comet and prove the superiority of the Fire Nation through his power. _Phoenix King Ozai, son of Azulon and Ilah. Father of Azula. Destroyer of the Avatar and supreme overlord of the Earth Kingdom._

Azula could laugh. She does – in her room, hysterically, because it is just so _funny._ Mai and Ty Lee, the weak ones, the cowards who would do anything to stay alive, risking their lives for the Avatar and her pathetic brother.

_Trust is for fools,_ Azula reminds herself. She trusted Mai and Ty Lee and look where that got her.

With only a month left until the comet, Azula spends her time helping with the preparations. Part of this is to scout a backward area of one of their colonies, and this is where she finds Zuko. He is helping with invasion. She knows this. She does not know what separated him from his little group, so close to the comet, but she knows she must kill him now.

They fight. Zuko surrenders. He meets her eyes, something sad lurking within him.

_Do you think we could have been real siblings, without the war?_

Azula snarls and snarks and says all kinds of things, that father doesn’t even think about him anymore, that the Fire Nation rejoiced with the news of his imprisonment, that they think of him as an honourless filthy traitor.

She runs out of breath. Zuko remains steady, a firm presence.

_He doesn’t care about you, Azula_ , he says quietly, dao swords discarded. _I know you want to think he does. I did too. But he’s just using you to conquer the Earth Kingdom._

Azula _knows._ She knows! He is using her skill and her connection and her reputation to force them into submission, and she _doesn’t care._ He is her father. He respects her. He lo- he admires her. Zuko is lying _( ~~Zuko never lies~~ )_ just to bring her down. She is not like him. She is the golden child, the prodigy, the favourite. She is the youngest wielder of lightning in Fire Nation history and bearer of the hottest flame to be achieved in thousands of years. She is _worthy._

Somehow, Azula begins to cry. She shoots lightning at him and he _redirects it,_ hands moving smooth as water and pointing it at the sky without any hesitation. Like it didn’t cross his mind, even for a moment, to shoot it back at Azula. She can’t redirect lightning. He could have killed her.

Her weak brother. Her pathetic brother. Zuzu, Ursa’s favourite, the one who proudly showed her his pets until she started killing them while he slept.

_Why,_ she screams, and Zuko shakes his head.

_Because I love you._

The comet is less than a month away, yet her father sent her on a useless errand to get her away from the palace. She heard whispers that she ignored, of how he would make Azula remain behind to protect the palace while he conquered the Earth Kingdom. Her mother hated her. Mai and Ty Lee, the only people she thought she could trust, betrayed her for the enemy.

Yet Zuko is still here. She burned him, taunted him, lied to him, manipulated him, threw him in prison and watched his Firebending waste away. After all that, he is still here, extending a hand and saying _I love you._ Not because he has an ulterior motive, but because he thinks he won’t survive the comet.

There is a catch. There is always a catch. But for now, Azula puts Zuko in chains and takes him back to the palace.

Azula has every intention of informing her father of Zuko’s capture, if only to gloat. Instead, she is immediately summoned to a war council in the main hall. Ozai reveals he is going to destroy the Earth Kingdom by himself, just as Azula overheard and ignored. She had dismissed it as nothing more than a jealous rumour.

_I thought we were going to do this together,_ she tells him, like the stupid little girl he thinks she is. Her hands shake with anger when she stands.

First her mother, then Mai and Ty Lee, and now her father. He never had any intention of sharing the glory of conquering the Earth Kingdom. He let her do all the hard work, the dirty work, then come running home for praise. He treated her like a pawn. Worse, he treated her like _Zuko._

And Zuko warned her.

Azula cares little for the war. She loves her fire and she loves inflicting pain. She does not oppose the war on principle – what she opposes is _inefficiency._ Wasted time. And it was becoming increasingly clear that all those years she spent trying to win her father’s favour and supporting the war were nothing more than that. Wasted time.

_Mercy_ is still not a word familiar to Azula. But after the meeting with her father, she creeps down into the dungeons and releases Zuko. Trust is for fools, but Zuko is a fool himself so maybe it cancels out.

_Let’s go,_ she tells him, smile wide and predatory. _We have a war to ruin._

The Avatar and his friends treat her like a fire-bomb about to explode, but Azula doesn’t care. She is not on their side, and certainly has no opposition to the destruction of the Earth Kingdom. She destroyed half of it herself. No, what she cares about is _revenge._ Everyone she ever loved or trusted left her. For all that she demanded loyalty of others, she felt it returned. Her father abused that loyalty and abused her and now he is going to pay.

He wants to win the war? Good luck when his most trusted ally has flipped the table on him, and is using his own pawns to do it. Let him see how it feels to be discarded.

Maybe in another life Azula is a little younger, a little less trusting, and her older brother does not return from the Earth Kingdom in chains. In that life, maybe Azula breaks down and spits lightning, unable to use anyone, unable to trust anyone. No friends, no allies, surrounded by enemies. But in this one, Zuko is there, and Azula is just old enough and just bitter enough to say _screw it._ She trusts Zuko enough to use him, and is just angry enough to want to hurt her father.

And that makes all the difference.

They plan, and they fight, and they tear their way through Caldera City and burn down the doors to the Fire Palace. Zuko and Azula, the banished son and the prodigal daughter, come to destroy everything their father worked so hard for. She always hated this stupid palace. She just used to believe that one day it would be hers, to rule and destroy. She believed that her father's favour would make everything worth it. That he would be proud of her, that he would love her. Now, she wants to raze everything to the ground like she should have done years ago, before her father burned her brother's face off and her mother fled into the night, abandoning her children to the cruelty of the palace. It will be a pleasure to burn. Fury courses through her body. She remains calm, carefully calculating their chances of success, but this is not about the war. This is not about the invasion or the Avatar. No, this is personal. Zuko and Azula ruining what ruined them. 

Zuko meets her eyes; teeth bared, looking more savage than Fire Nation prince. He blasts down the doors to the palace before she can say a word, and they fight their way to the throne room. If Zuko’s firebending was anything like this when he still lived in the palace, then maybe their father wouldn’t have thrown him away. Maybe they would have been proper siblings. 

Irritation flares, and Azula sets a guard on fire. He screams and throws himself to the ground, rolling like a dog. She steps casually over the corpse. There is nothing left for them here. Nothing worth pondering over, contemplating what-ifs and might-have-beens. The palace stinks of corruption, the very heart of it rotting away. Azula knows exactly where the heart lays. Inside their precious throne room. 

She still doesn’t trust Zuko. But they fight side by side as they tear through the halls of their memories, blue flame racing through the hallway, coloured almost purple by the red that courses through it. They will bring this palace down if it is the last thing they do. 

Azula takes Zuko’s hand. Together, they step into the throne room.

The world _burns._

**Author's Note:**

> I think I unwittingly aged Azula up in this. She reads more 16-ish to me than 14, which plays a huge part in her increased stability here. When you are 14 you don’t have the emotional or mental maturity to deal with something like that, which is partly why Azula broke down like she did. She had no one on her side, no support, and nowhere to turn. She had to cling to her father even after he abandoned her because she had no one else, and she knew it. Her whole breakdown was because she couldn’t trust anyone, and it destroyed her. “Trust is for fools”, but Azula craved trust and loyalty more than anyone, so people wouldn’t leave her. In this, the events and timeline changed a little so she doesn’t have Zuko to compete with or interfere, and he shows up towards the end so she has someone to count on. He isn’t her first, second, or even third choice, but after the thing with her father she decides she trusts him enough to work with him to destroy their father, thus averting her mental breakdown. Azula uses Zuko as a means to an end, but she trusts him as a tool. 
> 
> please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] fire and revenge can both keep a bed warm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23977696) by [Oceantail Podfics (Oceantail)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceantail/pseuds/Oceantail%20Podfics)




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